5 



ADDRESSES 



OF 



PRESIDENT WILSON 



AT 



DETROIT, MICH. 

TO THE SALESMANSHIP CONGRESS AND AT LUNCHEON 
TENDERED BY THE SALESMANSHIP CONGRESS 



AND 



TOLEDO, OHIO 



JULY 10, 1916 




WASHINGTON 
1916 







D. or J. 

AUG 7 1916 



ADDRESS TO THE SALESMANSHIP CONGRESS, DETROIT, MICH., 

JULY 10, 1916. 



Mr. Chair3ian, Ladies, and Gentlemen : 

It is with a great deal of gratification that I find myself facing so 
interesting and important a company as this. You will readily un- 
derstand that I have not come here to make an elaborate address, 
but I have come here to express my interest in the objects of this 
great association, and to congratulate you on the opportunities which 
are immediately ahead of you in handling the business of this 
country. 

These are days of incalculable change, my fellow citizens. It is 
impossible for anybody to predict anything that is certain, in detail, 
with regard to the future either of this country or of the world in the 
large movements of business; but one thing is perfectly clear, and 
that is that the United States will play a new part, and that it will 
be a part of unprecedented opportunity and of greatly increased 
responsibility. 

The United States has had a very singular history in respect of 
its business relationships with the rest of the world. I have always 
believed, and I think you have always believed, that there is more 
business genius in the United States than anywhere else in the 
world ; and yet America has apparently been afraid of touching too 
intimately the great processes of international exchange. America, 
of all countries in the world, has been timid ; has not until recently, 
has not until within the last two or three years, provided itself with 
the fundamental instrumentalities for playing a large part in the 
trade of the world. America, which ought to have had the broadest 
vision of any nation, has raised up an extraordinary number of 
provincial thinkers, men who thought provincially about business, 
men who thought that the United States was not ready to take her 
competitive part in the struggle for the peaceful conquest of the 
world. For anybody who reflects philosophically upon the history 
of this country, that is the most amazing fact about it. 

But the time for provincial thinkers has gone by. We must play a 
great part in the world whether we choose it or not. Do you know 

(3) 



51539—16 



the sifirnific-am-e of this single fact, tliat ^vithin the hist year or two 
we have, speaking in hirge terms, ceased to be a debtor nation and 
become a creditor nation^ AVe have more of the surphis gold of the 
world than we ever had before, and our business hereafter is to be to 
lend and to help and to promote the great peaceful enterprises of the 
world. A\'e have got to finance the world in some inii^ortant degree. 
and thos-e who finance the world must understand it and rule it with 
their spirits and with their minds. AVe can not cabin and confine our- 
selves any longer, and so I said that I came here to congratulate you 
upon the great role that lies ahead of you to play. This is a sales- 
manship congress, and hereafter salesmanship will have to be closely 
related in its outlook and scope to statesmanship, to international 
statesmanship. It will have to l)e touched with an intimate compre- 
hension of the conditions of business and enter[)rise throughout the 
round globe, because America Avill have to place her goods by run- 
ning her intelligence ahead of her goods. No amount of mere push, 
no amount of mei-e hustling, or. to speak in the western language, no 
amount of mere rustling, no amount of mere active enteri)rise. will 
suffice. 

Thei'e have been two ways of doing business in the world outside 
of the lands in which the great manufactures have been made. One 
has been to try to foi'ce the tastes of the manufacturing country on 
the country in whicli the markets were being sought, and the other 
way has been to study the tastes and needs of the countries where 
the markets were being sought and suit your goods to those tastes 
and needs: and the latter method has beaten the former method. If 
you are going to sell cari)ets. for example, in India, you have got to 
have as good taste as the Indians in the patterns of the carpets, and 
that is going some. If you are going to sell things in tropical coun- 
tries, they must, rather obviousl,v, be different from those which you 
.sell in cold and arctic countries. You cannot assume that the rest of 
tlie world is going to wear or use or manufacture what you wear and 
use and manufacture. Your raw materials must be the raw materials 
that they need, not the raw materials that you need. A'oui- manufac- 
tured goods must be the manufactured goods which they desire, not 
tho.se which other markets have desired. So your business will keep 
]iace with your knowledge, not of yourself and of your manufactur- 
ing processes, but of them nnd of their counnercial needs. That is 
statesmanshi|). because that is lelating your international activities 
to the conditions which exist in other countries. 

If we can once get what some gentlemen are so loath to give us. a 
merchant marine! The trouble with some iikmi is that they are .slow in 
their minds. Thvy do not see; tbcy do iu>t know tlie need, and they 
will n(»t aUow you to point it out to them. If we can once get in a 
]K>sition to deliver our own goods, then the goods that we have to 



deliver will be adjusted to the desires of those to whom we deliver 
them, and all the world will ^^•elcome America in the great field of 
commerce and manufacture. 

There is a great deal of cant talked, my fellow citizens, about 
service. I wish the word had not been surrounded with so much 
sickly sentimentality, because it is a good, robust, red-blooded word, 
and it is the key to everything that concerns the peace and pros- 
perity of the world. You can not force yourself upon anybody who 
is n.!t obliged to take you. The only way in which you can be sure 
of being accepted is by being sure that you have got something to 
offer that is worth taking, and the only way you can be sure of that 
is by being sure that you wish to adapt it to the use and the service 
of the people to whom you are trying to sell. 

I was trying to expound in another place the other day the long 
way and the short way to get together. The long way is to fight. 
I hear some gentlemen say that they want to help Mexico, and the 
way they propose to help her is to overwhelm her with force. That 
is the long way to help Mexico as well as the wrong way. After the 
fighting you have a nation full of justified suspicion and animated 
by well-founded hostility and hatred, and then will you help them? 
Then will you establish cordial business relationships with them? 
Then will you go in as neighbors and enjoy their confidence? On 
the contrary, you will have shut every door as if it were of steel 
against you. What makes Mexico suspicious of us is that she does 
not believe as yet that we want to serve her. She believes that we 
want to possess lier, and she has justification for the belief in the way 
in Avhich some of our fellow-citizens have tried to exploit her privileges 
and possessions. For my part, I will not serve the ambitions of these 
gentlemen, but I will try to serve all America, so far as intercourse 
with Mexico is concerned, by trying to serve Mexico herself. There 
are some things that are not debatable. Of course, we have to defend 
our border. That goes without saying. Of course, we must make 
good our own sovereignty, but we must respect the sovereignty of 
Mexico, I am one of those — I have sometimes suspected that there 
were not many of them — who believe, absolutely believe, the Vir- 
ginia Bill of Eights, which was the model of the old bill of rights, 
which says that a people has a right to do anything they please with 
their own countr}^ and their own government. I am old-fashioned 
enough to believe that, and I am going to stand by that belief. 
(That is for the benefit of those gentlemen who wish to butt in.) 

Now. I use that as an illustration, my fellow citizens. What do 
we all most desire when the present tragical confusion of the world's 
affairs is over? We desire permanent peace, do we not? Permanent 
peace can grow in only one soil. That is the soil of actual good 
will, and good will can not exist vdthout mutual comprehension. 



Charles Lamb, the I^nglish writer, made a very delightful remark 
that I have long treasured in my memory. He stuttered a little bit. 
and he said of some one who was not present. " I h-h-hate that 
m-man:" and .some one said. " AVhy, Charles, I didn't know you 
knew him." "Oh," he said. " I-I-I don't: I-I can't h-hate a m-man 
I know." That is a profound human remark. You can not hate a 
man you know. I know some rascals wlumi I have tried to hate. I 
have tried to head them off as rascals, but I have been unable to 
hate them. I have liked them. And so. not to compare like with 
unlike, in the relationship of nations with each other, many of our 
antagonisms are based upon misunderstandings, and as long as you 
do not understand a country you can not trade with it. As long 
as you can not take its point of view you can not commend your 
goods to its purchase. As long as you go to it with a supercilious 
air, for example, and j^atronize it. as we have tried to do in some less 
developed countries, and tell them that this is what they ought to 
want whether they want it or not. you can not do business with 
them. Y(ui have got to approach them just as you really ought to 
approach all matters of human relationship. 

Those people who give their money to philanthropy, for example, 
but can not for the life of them see from the point of view of 
those for whose benefit they are giving the money are not philan- 
thropists. They endow and promote philanthropy, but you can not 
be a philanthropi.st miless you love all sorts and conditions of men. 
-^The great l)arrier in this world, I have sometimes thought, is not the 
barrier of principle, but the barrier of taste. Certain classes of so- 
ciety find certain other classes of society distasteful to them. They 
do not like the way they dress. They do not like the infrciiuency 
with which they bathe. They do not like to consort with them under 
the conditions under which they live. and. therefore, they stand at a 
distance from them, and it is impossible for them to serve them. 
They do not understand them and do not feel that common i)ulse of 
humanity and that common school of experience which is the only 
thing that binds us together and educates us in the same fashion. 

This, then, my friends, is the simple message that T bring you. 
Lift your eyes to the horizons of business: do not look too close 
at the little processes with which you are coiu-erned. but let your 
thoughts and you;- imaginations run al)road throughout the whole 
world, and with tiie insjjiration of the thought that you are Amei- 
icans and are meant to carry liberty and justice and the principles 
of Innnanity wherever you go. go out and sell goods that will make 
the world more comfortable and more liap|)y. and convert them to 
tlie principles of America. 



ADDRESS AT LUNCHEON OF SALESMANSHIP CONGRESS, DETROIT, 

MICH., JULY 10, 1916. 



Mr. Chairman, Judge Murphy, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

I a in glad to find myself in Detroit and face to face with the men 
who have played the principal part in giving it distinction through- 
out the country and throughout the world. Looking about among" 
you, 1 see that it is true in this matter, as in others, that the only men 
fit for such a job are young men and men who never grow old. There 
is the liveliness of youth in the eyes even of those of you who have 
shared with me the painful parting with the hirsute appendage. 

I have been interested in some things that Mr. Denby has said to 
me to-day. He has shamefacedly admitted that he has found him- 
self enjoying the companionship of Democrats. Xow, I have long 
enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Kepublicans, because 
I am by instinct a teacher and I would like to teach them something. 
We have been trying, some of us, for a good many years to teach in 
politics, as well as elsewhere, this lesson, that we are all in the same 
boat ; we have common interests, and it is our business to understand 
and serve those common interests. The great difficulty that has 
confronted us, gentlemen, has often been that we have deliberately 
looked at these common interests from self-chosen angles, which 
made them look as if some of us were separated from others; as 
if some of us wanted to depress business, for example, and others of 
us wanted to exalt business. I dare say that you have noticed that 
the same necessity to make a living is imposed upon Democrats as 
Eepublicans, and I dare say you are ready to believe that Democrats 
are just as willing to make a good living as Republicans. Therefore, 
it seems to me logically to follow, though I have been quoted as 
having no regard for logic, that Democrats are naturally as much 
interested in the business prosperity of the L^^uited States as anybody 
else. So that if you believe that they are not as fitted to guide it 
as other persons, you can not be doubting their interest; you are 
only impugning their intelligence. 

And some Democrats had noticed that the inclination to suppose 
that only some persons understood the business of America had a 

(7) 



8 

teiKk'iicy to run into the assumption that the number of person^ who 
understood that business was very small, and that there were only 
certain groups and associations of gentlemen who were entitled to be 
trustees of that business for the rest of us. I have never subscribed, 
in any walk of life, to the trustee theory. I have always been inclined 
to believe that the business of the world was best understood by those 
men who were in the struggle for maintenance not only, but for suc- 
cess. The man who knows the strength of the tide is the man who is 
swinnning against it. not the man who is floating with it. The man 
who is immersed in the beginnings of business, who is trying to get 
his foothold, who is trying to get other men to believe in him and 
lend him money and trust him to make profit al^le use of that money, 
is the man who knows what the business conditions in the United 
States are, and I would rather take his counsel as to what ought to 
be done for business than the counsel of any established captain of 
industry. The captain of industry is looking backward and the other 
man is looking forward. The conditions of business change with 
every generation: change with every decade; are now changing at an 
almost breathless pace, and the men who hixxe made good are not 
feeling the tides as the other men are feeling them. The men ^^ ho 
have got into the position of captaincy, unless they are of unusual 
fiber, unless they are of unusually catholic sympathy, unless they ha\ e 
continued to touch shoulder with the ranks, unless they have contin- 
ued to keep close communion with the men they are employing and 
the young men they are bringing up as their assistants, do not belong 
to the struggle in which we should see that every unreasonable ob- 
stacle is removed and every reasonable hel}) afforded that public 
policy can afford. 

So I invite your thoughts, in what I sincerely believe to be an en- 
entirely nonpartisan spirit, to the democracy of business. An act 
was recently passed in Congress that some of the most intelligent 
business men of this country earnestly opposed, — men v, honi I knew, 
men whose character I trusted, men whose integrity 1 al)Solutely 
believed in. I refer to the Federal Reserve Act, l)y which we in- 
tended to take, and succeeded in taking credit out of the control of a 
siuall number of men and making it available to everybody who bad 
real connuerc-ial assets. an<l the \ery men who oi^posed that act, and 
opposed it conscientiously, now admit that itsaved the country from a 
ruinous panic when the stress of war came on. and that it is the salva- 
ti<»n of every average businessman who is in the midst of the tidesthat 
I have been trying to describe. What does that mean, gentlemen^ 
It means that you can get a settled point of view and can conscien- 
tiously opjjose progress if you do not need progress yourself. That 
is what it means. I am not impugning the int^dligence even of the 
men who o|)posed these things, because the same thing happens to 



every man if he is not of extraordinary make-up, if he can not see 
the necessity for a thing that he does not himself need. When you 
have abundant credit and control of credit, you, of course, do not 
need that the area of credit should be broadened. 

The suspicion is beginning to dawn in many quarters that the aver- 
age man knows the business necessities of the country just as well 
as the extraordinary man does. I believe in the ordinary man. If 
I did not believe in the ordinary man I would move out of a democ- 
racy and, if I found an endurable monarchy, I would live in it. The 
very conception of America is based upon the validity of the judg- 
ments of the average man, and I call you to witness that there have 
not been many catastrophes in American history. I call you to 
witness that the average judgments of the voters of the United 
States have been sound judgments. I call you to witness that this 
great impulse of the common opinion has been a lifting impulse, 
and not a depressing impulse. What is the object of associations 
like that which is gathered here to-day, this Salesmanship Congress? 
The moral of it is that a few men can not determine the interests 
of a large body of men, and that the only way to determine them 
and advance them is to have a representative assembly chosen by 
themselves get together and take common counsel regarding them. 
And do you not notice that in every great occupation in the United 
States there is beginning to be more and more of this common coun- 
sel? And have you not noticed that the more common counsel you 
Jiave the higher the standards are that are insisted upon? 

I attended the other day the Congress of the Advertising Men, 
and their motto is '' Truth and fair dealing in what you represent 
your business to be and your goods to be." I have no doubt that in 
every association like this the prevailing sentiment is that only by 
the highest standards — I mean the highest moral standards — can you 
achieve the most permanent and satisfactory business results. Was 
that the prevalent conception before these associations were drawn 
together^ Have you not found the moral judgment of the average 
man steady the whole process and clarify it? Do you not know 
more after every conference with your fellows than you did l)efore? 
I never went into a committee of any kind upon any important pub- 
lic matter, or private matter so far as that is concerned, that I did 
not come out with an altered judgment and knowing much more 
about the matter than when I went in ; and not only knowing much 
more, but knowing that the common judgment arrived at was better 
than I could have suggested when I went in. That is the universal 
experience of candid men. If it were not so, there would be no object 
in congresses like this. Yet whenev^er we attempt legislation, we find 
ourselves in this case : We are not in the presence of the many who 
can counsel wisely, but we are in the presence of the few who counsel 



10 

too narrowly, ami the iiK'an> by which we have been trying to break 
awav from that is n<»t by excliuling tliese gentlemen who constituted 
the narrow eireles of adx iee. but by associating them with hundreds 
of tliousands of their fellow citizens. 

I have had some say that I was not accessible to them, and when I 
inquired into it I found they meant that I did not personally invite 
them. They did not know how to come without being invited, and 
they did not care to come if they came upon the same terms with 
everybody else, knowing that everybody else was welcome whom I 
had the time to confer with. 

Am I telling you things unobserved by you? Do you not know 
that these things are true? And do you not believe with me that 
the affairs of the Nation can be better conducted upon the basis of 
general counsel than upon the basis of special counsel? Men are 
colored and governed by their occupations and their surroundings 
and their hal)its. If I wanted to change the law radically. 1 would 
not consult a lawyer. If I wanted to change business methods radi- 
cally, I would not consult a man who had made a conspicuous suc- 
cess by using the present methods that I wanted to change. Not 
because I would distrust these men. but because I would know that 
they would not change their thinking over night, that they would 
have to go through a long process of reacquaintance with the cir- 
cumstances of the time, the new circumstances of the time, before 
they could be converted to my point of vieAv. You get a good deal 
more light on the street than you do in the closet. You get a good 
deal more light by keeping your ears open among the rank and 
file of your fellow citizens than you do in any private conference 
whatever. I would rather hear wlmt the juen are talking about on 
the trains and in the shops and by the fireside than hear anything 
else, because I want guidance and I know I could get it there, and 
what I am constantly asking is that men should bring me that counsel, 
because I am not privileged to determine things independently of 
this counsel. I am your servant, not your ruler. 

One thing that we are now ti-ying to convert the small circles to 
that the big circles arc already converted to is that this country 
needs a merchant marine and ought to get one. 1 have found that 
I had a great deal more resistance when I tried to help business 
than when I tried to interfere with it. 1 ha\e had a great deal more 
resistance of counsel, of special counsel, when T tried to alter the 
things that are established than when I tried to do anything else. 
We call our.selves a liberal nation, whereas, as a matter of fact, we 
are one of the most conservative nations in the world. If you want to 
make enemies, try to change something. You know why it is. To do 
things to-day exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking. 
It does not cost you anything. You have ac(|uirc(l the hal»it: you 



11 

know the routine ; you do not have to plan anything, and it frightens 
you with a hint of exertion to learn that you will have to do it a 
diiFerent way to-morrow. Until I became a college teacher, I used 
to think that the young men were radical, but college boys are the 
greatest conservatives I ever tackled in my life, largely because they 
have associated too much with their fathers. What you have to do 
with them is to take them up upon some visionary height and show 
them the map of the world as it is. Do not let them see their father's 
factory. Do not let them see their father's countinghouse. Let them 
see the great valleys teeming with laborious people. Let them see 
the great struggle of men in realms they never dreamed of. Let them 
see the great emotional power that is in the world, the great am- 
bitions, the great hopes, the great fears. Give them some picture 
of mankind, and then their father's business and every other man's 
business will begin to fall into place. They will see that it is an 
item and not the whole thing; and they will sometimes see that the 
item is not properly related to the whole, and what they will get 
interested in will be to relate the item to the whole, so that it will 
form part of the force, and not part of the impediment. 

This country, above every country in the world, gentlemen, is 
meant to lift; it is meant to add to the forces that improve. It is 
meant to add to everything that betters the world, that gives it 
better thinking, more honest endeavor, a closer grapple of man with 
man, so that we will all be pulling together like one irresistible team 
in a single harness. That is the reason why it seemed wise to substi- 
tute for the harsh processes of the law, which merely lays its hand 
on your shoulder after you have sinned and threatens you with 
punishment, some of the milder and more helpful processes of coun- 
sel. That is the reason the Federal Trade Commission was estab- 
lished, — so that men would have some place where they could take 
counsel as to what the law was and what the law permitted; and 
also take counsel as to whether the law itself was right and advice 
had not better be taken as to its alteration. The proceseses of 
counsel are the only processes of accommodation, not the processes 
of punishment. Punishment retards but it does not lift up. Pun- 
ishment impedes but it does not improve. And we ought to sub- 
stitute foi- the harsh processes of the law, wherever we can, the 
milder and gentler and more helpful processes of counsel. 

It has been a very great grief to some of us, year after year, year 
after year, to see a fundamental thing like the fiscal policy of the Gov- 
ernment with regard to duties on imports made a football of politics. 
Why, gentlemen, party politics ought to have nothing to do with the 
question of what is for the benefit of the business of the LTnited States, 
and that is the reason we ought to have a tariff commission, and, I 
may add, are going to have a tariff commission. But, then, gentle- 



12 

men. the trouble Avill be iiixm me. The provision as it stands makes 
it obligatory upon me nt)t to choose more than half the commission 
from any one political party. The bill does not undertake to say 
how many political parties there are. That just now is a delicate 
question. But I am forbidden to take more than two of the same 
variety, and yet the trouble about that is I would like to find men for 
that commission who were of no one of the varieties. I would like to 
find men who would find out the circumstances of Anieiitau busi- 
ness, particularly as it chanfres and is going to change with perplex- 
ing rapidity in the years immediately ahead of us, without any 
regard whatever to the interest of any party whatever, so that we 
should be able to legislate upon the facts and upon the lai-ge economic 
aspects of those facts without stopping to think which party it was 
going to hurt and which party it was going to benefit. I'ut almost 
everybody in this country wears a label of some kind, and under the 
law I suppose I will have to turn them around and see how they are 
labeled, how they are branded : and that is going to ])e a very great 
blow to my spirit and a very great test of my judgment. I hope, 
after the results are achieved, you will judge me leniently, because 
my desire would be not to have a bipartisan but an al)solutely non- 
partisan commission of men who really applied the tests of scientific 
analysis of the facts and no other tests whatever to the conclusions 
that they arrived at. 

Did you ever think how absolutely supreme and sovereign facts are? 
You can make laws all the year through contrary to the facts and the 
facts will overrun the laws. Do not let a fact catch you napping, 
because you will get the worst of it if you do: and the object of the 
tar i If commission is that we should see the facts coming first, so that 
they could not get us. I remember a cynical politician saying to 
nie once, when I was thanking him for having voted the way I hoj^ed 
he would vote, knowing that that had not been his initial inclina- 
tion, " Well. (Jovernor, they never get me if I see them coming first." 
He had heard from home, and he saw them coming. Now. T have 
that attitude toward facts. 1 never let them get nic if T see them 
fir.st, and it is because I want to see them that I want ((.uuuissions of 
this sort and the spirit of this sort that 1 have tried to describe 
in the commission as it is constituted. 

Becau.se, as I was saying this uioining. tiu-re is a task ahead of 
us of most coUossal dilliculty. We have not been accustomed to the 
large world of international business and we have got to get accus- 
tomed to it i-ight awiiy. All prox iucials have got to take a l«ack 
seat. All men who aiv at'iaid of coinpetition have got to take a 
back seat. All men who depend upon anything except their intelli- 
gence and their etHciency have got to take a l)a<k seat. It will 
be interesting to see tlie sifting process go on. I have some men in 



13 

mind to nominate for back seats, and I will not draw all of them 
from the same party. It will not need an act of Congress for that 
purpose. And some men are going to be surprised at the keen- 
ness of the air into Avhich they are thrust out. They are going 
to be thrust out, and we are either going to make conquest, peaceful 
conquest, of the markets of the world or we are going to be pre- 
vented forevermore of boasting of the I)usiness ability of America. 
I have never been afraid of trusting an American business man out 
in the air, but some men have. They have said, "Give us a vrall 
to crouch behind for fear these fellows should get us," and when 
it has come to finding out who were crouching behind the wall, it 
was found that all sorts were crouching behind the wall, the capable 
and the incapable, and that the main object of the wall was to 
shelter the incapable. 

As an American I am too proud to submit to anything like that. 
I believe that Americans can manufacture goods better than anybody 
else; that they can sell goods as honestly as an3^body else; thdt they 
can find out the conditions and meet the conditions of foreign business 
better than anybody else, and I want to see them given a chance right 
away, and they will be whether I want them to be or not. We have 
been trying to get ready for it. The national banks of the United 
States, until the recent Currency Act, were held back by the very 
terms of the law under which they operated from some of the most 
important international transactions. To my mind that is one of the 
most amazing facts of our commercial history. The Congress of the 
United States was not willing that the national banks should have a 
latchkey and go aAvay from home. They were afraid they would not 
know how to get back under cover, and banks from other countries 
had to establish branches where American bankers were doing busi- 
ness, to take care of some of the most important processes of inter- 
national exchange. That is nothing less than amazing, but it is not 
necessary any longer. It never was necessary ; it was only thought to 
be necessary by some eminently provincial statesmen. We are done 
with provincialism in the statesmanship of the United States, and we 
have got to have a view now and a horizon as wide as the world 
itself. And when I look around upon an alert company like this, it 
seems to me in my imagination they are almost straining at the leash. 
They are waiting to be let loose upon this great race that is now go- 
ing to challenge our abilities. For my part, I shall look forward to 
the result with absolute and serene confidence, because the spirit of 
the United States is an international spirit, if we conceive it right. 
This is not the home of any particular race of men. This is not the 
home of any particular set of political traditions. This is a home the 
doors of which have been opened from the first to mankind, to every- 
body who loved liberty, to everybody whose ideal was equality of op- 



14 

poitunity. to everybody whose heart was moved by the fundamental 
instincts and sympathies of humanity. That is America, and now it 
is as if the nations of the world, sampled and united here, were in 
their new union and new common understanding turning about to 
serve the world with all the honest processes of business and of enter- 
prise. I am happy that I sliould be witnessing the dawn of the day 
when America is indeed to come into her own. 



ADDRESS AT TOLEDO, OHIO, JULY 10, 1916. 



My Fellow Citizens: 

This is an entire surprise party to me. I did not know I was 
going to have the pleasure of stopping long enough to address any 
number of you, but I am very glad indeed to give you my very 
cordial greetings and to express my very great interest in this 
interesting city. 

General Sherwood said that there were many things we agreed 
about, there is one thing we disagree about. General Sherwood has 
been opposing preparedness, and I have been advocating it, and I 
am very sorry to have found him on the other side. Because, I think, 
you will bear me witness, fellow citizens, that in advocating pre- 
paredness I have not been advocating hostility. You will bear me 
witness that I have been a persistent friend of peace and that notic- 
ing but unmistakable necessity will drive me from that position. I 
think it is a matter of sincere congratulation to us that our neighbor 
Eepublie to the south shows evidences of at last believing in our 
friendly intentions; that while we must protect our border and see 
to it that our sovereignty is not impugned, we are ready to respect 
their sovereignt}" also, and to be their friends, and not their enemies. 

The real uses of intelligence, my fellow citizens, are the uses of 
peace. Any bod}' of men can get up a row, but only an intelligent 
body of men can get together and cooperate. Peace is not only a test 
of a nation's patience; it is also a test of whetlier the nation knows 
how to conduct its relations or not. It takes time to do intelligent 
things, and it does not take any time to do unintelligent things. I 
can lose my temper in a minute, but it takes me a long time to keep 
it, and I think that if you were to subject my Scotch-Irish blood to 
the proper kind of analysis, you would find that it was fighting blood, 
and that it is pretty hard for a man born that way to keep quiet and 
do things in the way in which his intelligence tells him he ought to 
do them. I knoAv 'just as well as that I am standing here that I 
represent and am the servant of a Nation that loves peace, and that 
loves it upon the proper basis; loves it not because it is afraid of any- 
body ; loves it not because it does not understand and mean to main- 
tain its rights, but because it knows that humanity is something in 
which we are all linked together, and that it behooves the L^nited 

(15) 



16 

States, just as long as it is possible, to hold off from becoming in- 
volved ill a strife which makes it all the more necessary that some 
part of the wftrkl should keep cool while all the rest of it is hot. 
Here in America, for the time being, are the spaces, the cool spaces, 
cf thoiightfulness, and so long as we are allowed to do so, we will 
serve and not contend with the rest of our fellow men. We are the 
more inclined to do this because the very principles upon which our 
Government is based are principles of connnon counsel and not of 
contest. 

So. my fellow citizens. I congratulate myself upon this oppor- 
tunity, brief as it is. to give you my greetings and to convey to you 
my congratulations that the signs that surround us are all signs 
of peace. - .... 

o 



